By Rahil Nora Chopra
CONGRESS PONDERS: AFTER RAHUL, WHO?
The Congress is confused regarding the post of the President of the Congress party, as the Congress Working Committee, in its last meeting, rejected the resignation of Rahul Gandhi and appealed him to continue as party president. Meanwhile, many secretaries in the AICC and several office-bearers of Youth and Mahila Congress have resigned in the footsteps of Rahul Gandhi. The in-charge of Chhattisgarh, PL Punia, has also resigned. However, Rahul Gandhi is adamant that he will not continue as party president, and as the proverbial last nail, he tweeted out his resignation letter, in which he accepted responsibility for the 2019 Lok Sabha election performance by the Congress, and also mentioned that he would not have any say in the choosing of the new president. In the light of the finality of Rahul’s decision, at last, few alternatives are being talked about and three names for the post of Congress president are in discussion. They are Mallikarjun Kharge, Ashok Gehlot and Sushil Kumar Shinde. Kharge was the party’s leader in the 16th Lok Sabha and has an edge over the others, particularly because he is from the South, which has given Congress about 21 of the 52 seats in the current Lok Sabha. All the three leaders are considered loyalists of the Gandhi family. Another name floated on Saturday is of Manmohan Singh. Meanwhile, in political circles, there is armour that an alternative is Sonia Gandhi who can become party chief temporarily so that party get time to choose a suitable candidate for the post of Congress president. Meanwhile, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who has made Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, has not been well received and there has been no announcement regarding a deputy leader in the Lok Sabha. Manish Tewari and Shashi Tharoor do not want to work under him.
AS BJP WORKING PRESIDENT, NADDA DOES SHAH’S BIDDING
J P Nadda, presently designated as the working president of the BJP, is likely to graduate to being a full-fledged president by the end of this year. Meanwhile, Nadda is indeed a working president, working hard at the behest of the real party chief. Amit Shah, it seems has drawn up a 120-day schedule for his understudy. Unlike the talk doing the rounds, Shah’s priority is not exactly the coming Assembly elections of Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra — swell, he think the BJP faces little challenge in these states — but the grassroots membership drive. Apparently, the focus is on constituencies where the BJP had lost or had a low vote share in the Assembly elections — in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. And in all states, the drive is to get local block-level celebrities, people with any following in social media, who can influence opinions, into the saffron fold.
IS TEJASHWI YADAV BACK FROM POLITICAL WILDERNESS?
After the Lok Sabha election drubbing, the RJD leaders have been staying away from Bihar politics for over a month now and have shown no reaction or concern about the children’s death in Muzaffarpur. No party leader from RJD has even visited Muzaffarpur. Senior leaders are blaming Tejashwi Prasad Yadav for the RJD debacle in the general election, in which it failed to win even one Lok Sabha seat. Recently, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav had surfaced on Saturday, not physically but on Twitter, where he posted a line: “I am undergoing the treatment for an injury to the ligament of the knee.” In the last Lok Sabha election, his sister Misa Bharti, a Rajya Sabha MP, had interfered in the party affairs, while it seemed that brother Tej Pratap would launch a new party called “Tej Sena” resulting Tejashwi Yadav staying in Delhi. However, now Tejashwi’s supporters are claiming that he would be back in Patna within a day or two and he would fight for Bihar problems. With Lalu in jail, RJD is moving towards a natural death and for the first time in 30 years, the RJD has no MP in the Lok Sabha.
WHY MAYAWATI IS QUEEN OF ALLIANCE-BREAKING
Formation and breaking of alliances are not new for Mayawati. In the last Lok Sabha election, Mayawati had made alliance with Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, but immediately after the result, she broke the partnership. For BSP, this is a routine exercise before and after the election. BSP had allied with SP for the first time in 1993 and with a favourable result, had together formed the government in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India. But in 1995, BSP broke the alliance and made her government, with outside support of BJP. Then again in 1996, BSP fought the election with Congress, but soon she broke the alliance with Congress and went again with BJP with a condition that both parties would make the government alternatively every six months. Once again, when BJP came to power after six months, she withdrew support. But BJP’s Kalyan Singh saved his government by dividing BSP into two.It was then that Mayawati declared that she would never have any alliance with BJP, but after five years, in 2002,Mayawati became the UP Chief Minister with the support of BJP. It is the fact that if Mayawati had not made any alliance with SP this time, then the result of the BSP would have remained the same as of 2014. The alliance with SP in 2019 compelled Muslims to give votes to BSP candidates en masse resulting in the winning of BSP candidates from Bijnor, where the Hindu candidate of BSP was fighting against the Muslim candidate of Congress. Since BSP had given ticket to a Hindu candidate in Meerut in place of a Muslim candidate, BSP must have won it at all because of the support of SP votes to BSP. SP has lost in the 2019 Lok Sabha election because of their family dispute and now Mayawati has left the SP as usual. She will be looking to make a new alliance in the next election.
FOR MANMOHAN’S RAJYA SABHA RE-ENTRY, IT’S TAMIL NADU OR RAJASTHAN
Congress is learnt to have asked ally DMK for a Rajya Sabha berth amid indication that it may be used to bring former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who retired recently on June 14, back to the Upper House. There are three vacancies from Tamil Nadu and DMK is reportedly agreeable to give extra votes to Congress. However, with the sudden demise of Rajasthan Rajya Y Sabha BJP MP Madan Lal Saini last week, the Congress wants Manmohan Singh to be elected from Rajasthan. (IPA)